California Set to Give a New Extra-Judicial Eviction Tool to Oakland, Updated with Letter from City Attorney Urging New Eviction Powers

While several patches to Oakland and San Francisco’s tenant rent laws have made the news over the past weeks—notably, the flawed and insufficient Capital Improvements modifying legislation in Oakland, and increases in minimums of Ellis Act Eviction buy outs in San Francisco—there has been more than one potentially catastrophic piece of extra-judicial anti-tenant legislation inching through the sausage making machines in Oakland and the state houses.

Most recently, AB1513, which passed the Judicial Committee today and heads to the House, will give landlords new abilities to kick out non-leasing holding tenants that would have formerly enjoyed substantial legal protections. All a landlord would have to do to evict tenants under AB1513 is to file an affidavit to the DA, which would generate a three day eviction order.

Not as extensive, but perhaps more troubling—at least because of the enthusiastic participation of City Council and City Attorney in helping craft the legislation—is AB 2310. AB 2310 is a state bill meant to put back into law a lapsed pilot program that, for a short time, gave cities the extra-judicial power to evict based on arrests for illegal weapon and ammunition possession.

Oakland already has city code, 8.23.100, allowing the city attorney to force landlords to evict based solely on arrest and/or “evidence” or other reports—evidence it is not legally required to share with the landlord or tenant. Moreover, landlords themselves can initiate the process by filing a report themselves. This is all bad enough. No one seems to know how many evictions have occurred in Oakland based on 8.23.100– circumventing all tenant laws on the books, based on hearsay, and in the best case scenario, a police report. Though I intend to have more on that soon.

But this latest step captures the kind of lawless and racist behavior that has characterized the city’s wedded response to both gentrification and violence in Oakland. When the pilot program returned as a bill aiming for a permanent law at the state level, the city attorney and the city council introduced a resolution pleading with the the state government to specifically include Oakland [and no other Alameda County city], alongside San Diego and Los Angeles. The city resolution supporting AB 2310 was passed unanimously without comment or discussion by the City Council in just over three minutes.

Despite their best efforts, however, Oakland was, at some point, dropped from the language of the bill. That’s when a lobbying firm working for the city—Townsend Public Affairs—picked up the ball on Oakland’s behalf. TPA, which was given a no-bid contract to represent the city at the Federal and State level in January, successfully returned Oakland to the bill’s language last week, according to public documents, by lobbying the office of California Assembly Member Ridgely Thomas. Some of the email exchanges between Parker and Niccolo de Luca, a TPA lobbyist, are disturbing and revealing.

“The Chief of Staff also mentioned potential concerns that this law could be used to clear out buildings that then become gentrified. I explained to him” writes Niccolo, “…Oakland is very pro-tenant.”

The email stream between Townsend and Parker’s office goes on to explain a disturbing “caveat” that the Chief of Staff also added to Oakland’s Faustian lobbying efforts:

“Here is the only caveat; we will need to use this tool as they will be keeping annual data and if we don’t use it, and they see that, we won’t have much empathy…just passing this on.” Parker replies to Niccolo, “I understand the caveat”.

As I wrote, the city has for some time had the power to force landlords to evict, or to evict on behalf of landlords, tenants simply accused of drug crimes [and non-crimes]. Not even a police report is necessary, apparently. Not content with that, the city is now lobbying, cavalierly, for a new panoply of potential baseless accusations that seem to require an even lower standard of evidence—just the suspicion of possessing illegal weapons, based apparently on evidence the city needn’t show the tenant.

The factors that indicate the potential abuse for such a law seem manifest: a city government desperate to convince newer, whiter and affluent residents entering poor and of color communities that they are “tough on violence and crime”; landlords eager to get rid of Black and Latino tenants who frighten new whiter tenants and neighbors; and a “caveat” that the city must “use it” or “lose it” which would seem to be a admonishment to ramp up extra-judicial evictions.

The city understands the caveat very well. As residents of Oakland we should too.

While I’m not an expert on the city’s Just Cause law, the ordinance seems to explicitly exclude the kinds of evictions Parker is talking about under the city’s own nuisance ordinance and the state bill. The problem that the state may be foreseeing is that the law itself, as well as the city’s law, require a very low standard of evidence, requiring only an arrest report [or perhaps even the accusation, still not clear], not a conviction. Thus Parker seems to have deliberately misrepresented the potential impact of the state law, which would allow landlords and the city itself to circumvent the Just Cause Eviction ordinance.

It’s not surprising that Ridley-Thomas apparently voiced concern about how the law would be used, given that Oakland is becoming known as the new ground zero for affluence-related displacement in Northern California. People should be outraged that at a time of increased scrutiny on fair and affordable housing, the city attorney’s office is seeking new means of extra-judicial eviction based on flimsy evidence, whether on public safety grounds or not.

In view of the many discussions we used to have, I thought it might interest you to know (and please forgive me if I am wrong) that I have completely renounced any “pro-Israel” stance. The current atrocities in Gaza opened my eyes fully. You were, I believe, pretty much right about everything.

It is quite humbling to realize how wrong one has been about some fundamental things. (I did have 15 seconds of anonymous social-media fame when Greenwald tweeted something about my conversion to the side of the angels.) Anyway, I wish you all the best, and thank you for putting up with me, back in the day.

I actually really got a lot out of your support and your comments. You were so right on on other issues, I just thought it was a matter of time before you dumped the Zionism. I will be honest, I didnt’ think it would take this long, tho.

Why don’t you write about this from teh perspective of someone who agreed with a lot of social justice issues on the left, but found it hard to let go of zionism. I would totally let you guest write here [for whatever that’s worth, obviously]

I wouldn’t know what to say, really. A lot of otherwise good and decent people have moral blind spots the approximate size of New Jersey. They/we spend a lot of time constructing rationalizations to defend the indefensible. For me, it was 4 dead kids on a beach that caused me not only to realize the monstrous nature of Israel’s present actions, but also to see with clear eyes the ethical and practical untenability of the entire Zionist project.